June-August

Things have been insane in the membrane. I haven’t really wanted to post for a while because 90% of what I do outside of work is photography stuff now. And it’s not really all that exciting for the most part. Lots of editing and scrolling through pictures. It’s exciting for me, but probably not for most people.

It looks like my last post was in June. It’s August now. So what has happened since June? I guess the biggest thing was that I got my new website up and running (www.wix.com/photosbybecky/web). I’m pretty sure it has been a huge help in getting clients. Even if it’s not though, I feel like such a big shot with my own fancy website :)

Last month I passed the test for two brides—they decided to try me out for their engagement sessions, and see if they liked me enough to book me for their wedding. It was one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve done since high school! I was so nervous. Not because I felt like I didn’t have the ability SOMEWHERE inside me. But that I would screw something up. Like I’d forget to bring my memory card, or I’d leave the ISO up all the way … (um… not that I’ve done that…), or I’d do something like very Becky (and impossible) and leave my lens cap on or something. But things went well, and I’ve finally broken my way into the wedding industry! We’ll see how things go when the weddings come ‘round the mountain.

I’ve been so thankful for my friends—and even acquaintances—who have referred people to me. It makes me feel better about the mistakes I make when people actually like my work :)

I’ve been spending a lot of time researching other people’s styles, and messing around with my camera.

Work has been busy. I don’t really want to talk about it. :P

I’m re-reading The Lord of the Rings, and thoroughly enjoying it.

We spent some time in Idaho a couple weeks ago for a funeral. It was a sad experience, but I was grateful for my new hobby—to give me something to take my mind off of things, and to preserve some of the memories I have of my great aunt who passed. I took some pictures of her home, and little things around her house that I’d always cherished growing up. Like the knobs on her oven, her clock (it’s too bad I couldn’t capture the sound it makes too), the steep steps into the basement, the darkness that was the basement laundry-room, the latch to the screen door from the garage to the kitchen, the stairs on the entry, the wallpaper in the pink bathroom (that is ironically back in style), the fake fruit made of pins and beads we weren’t allowed to touch, the bottom cupboards in the hallways that I was allowed to search through, the dusty bar counter in the basement full of odds and ends like punch bowls and random vases that I used to use to play “party”, the “goody” brush in the bathroom I used to borrow when my hair was snarly, the crack down the middle of the cement patio out back that my chair used to get caught on when we’d play scrabble outside, the bushes along the back fence where I found my first caterpillar, the paper cup dispenser by the sink that holds those tiny cups with fish printed on them that are so perfect for 5 year-old hands, the spot on the shag carpet I threw up on in the basement one Thanksgiving, the Thanksgiving Dinners all crammed in the basement with all the tables and chairs in the house lined up, the lava-rock garden in the front yard, the clown made of yarn hanging in the dining room; and things I didn’t recognize till I was older, like the old-fashioned mirror in the front entry way, the bird and flower wall decorations, the never-visited “side and rear of the house”, the laundry room with the lights ON, the guest bedroom with various heirlooms stored about—like the vanity set with matching brush, comb, and mirror, my aunt’s bedroom, the tv mounted into the wall and surrounding bookshelf covered in old books, that her street was named Circle Drive—how absurd, the stash of old photographs in the hidden cabinet under that tv, and so many other things. I couldn’t stop feeling like everything is changing, and nothing is ever going to be the same anymore. Her house will probably be sold, if not only taken apart and boxed up. The little things she did to make it her home, like the notes on top of the dishwasher in the corner of the dining room, the tiny boxes of cereal Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes mostly) she’d buy for when we visited and wanted snacks, the Christmas coloring books stashed away, and the magnetic pictures of her great-neices and nephews on the fridge, her deep blue Cougar in the garage, will be gone soon, as there’s no one to drive it. Even the way she meticulously preserved her own mother’s touch on the décor will be gone. Her health had been failing for a number of years, and things haven’t been the same with her as when I was little for quite a long time. But many things were preserved, including everything in her home. It was easy to put the time when things would be completely different out of mind. I wish there had been a way to take a picture of the rest of the things about her that I don’t want to forget. Like how she was one of two people who could tell my grandma what to do, that she HAD to wash the sheets and make the beds frequently, that she’d sit and listen to what we were interested in as kids, that she never forgot my birthday. That she always had Caffeine Free Diet Coke in the fridge. Her handwriting. I want to remember sitting in the back seat of her car by myself on the drive to Bear Lake, and the first time I realized she had temple clothes, had a career before she retired, wasn’t always old and wrinkly—but young and beautiful, and how she must have wanted children.

I can’t help but think forward in time to when the rest of my family passes. I really only have one set of grandparents who were a large part of my life. I include her in that set as a second grandma on my mom’s side. My grandpa passed a few years back, and adding her death to that list really made me stop and think about how much of what I care about won’t be around forever. Each time I visit them, I feel like I never realized how much I care about them and their little dot on the map. One day it will be MY mom who is old and wrinkly, and MY children looking at her and asking her if they can get M&Ms from the Maverick on the corner.

Strange to think about.

I know everyone on earth experiences death—their own death as well as the death of those they love. Most people, luckily, experience death the “normal” way, by old age. I know it’s nothing extra-ordinary to be experiencing the death of a great-aunt or grandparent. But it is important for each person who experiences it.

My family probably got really tired really fast of all the pictures I was taking. I’ve become “that aunt” with the camera. But I couldn’t bring myself to put it down. I kept seeing things around me that I wanted to preserve. Things are always changing, and they’ll never be the same. Change can be good. But I don’t want to forget the things that were important to me along the way.

One of my favorite shoots yet.

Seriously, thank you Rachel! You are beautiful.

How things have been

Wow, I stink at blogging lately. Here's why:

I've been at my new job for 4 weeks now. I'm still learning a lot of new things. I think it will be another month or two before I'm comfortable with the day-to-day things I have to do.

I'm working on the side for my old boss. I help him for $18/hour doing little things he needs from my home in the evenings. We knew my time would be in higher demand for the first couple of months... but it has been hard, even being prepared for it. I get home from work, and whip out my dinosaur laptop from my old job for an hour or two 2-3 times/week. I get my first paycheck from this next week, so we will see how worth it it has been :)

I'm also still doing photography. I am only 2 shoots behind on editing, amazingly. I need to just push myself to work extra hard for two weeks to get caught up, I just haven't seemed to want to yet.

I have only been scheduling 1 shoot/week now though. This is going to be much better for me. More time for relaxing. And more time to enjoy the shoots I'm working on. I want to be able to LEARN as I go, not just be forced to spit pictures out.

I did have my first really unfortunate misunderstanding with a client though. No details will be given, but it was embarrassing, and awkward, and I hope I've met the worst situation I will meet.

Trevor's been nice about me having less time. He's been picking up the laundry slack, and not complaining too much when I don't want to do anything but watch tv in my relaxation time.

After finishing The Wheel of Time series, I started reading some more Jane Austen books. Just finished Emma.

Emma by Jane Austen


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Hm... Emma. I dislike her. I grew to like the story. I expect that this is how it was supposed to be, but I immediately was fond of Mr. Knightley. And throughout the entire book was looking out for his welfare. Even though Emma admits she is self-centered, and Austen intends for her to be that way, I still have a hard time sympathizing with her. I'm happy that Mr. Knightley ends up happy, but to be honest, I don't think Emma deserves him. He must see a goodness in her that the book doesn't fully portray.

This book, more than the other two Austen books I've read so far, has a bigger statement on rank. Emma is overly concerned with each of her friends' rank and status in the society they keep. She ruins people's dreams and lives just because they have less money or less "elegance," as she puts it. Emma has a sense of propriety that is far stricter that everyone else's around her, she seems to just come off as a snob a lot of times. I'm glad that Mr. Knightley is there to continue to guide her in the right direction.

The first part of the book was a little dull, but it got more interesting as the chapters progressed. Secret engagements and uncouth men seem to be Austen's fallback. I guess what the end result is going to be simply because I can expect a certain storyline from Austen now. Although, making Mr. Churchill actually AGREEABLE was a change.

I believe I see the statement Austen was trying to make in writing Emma. Emma is a judgemental person. We see her faults and we see her strengths through her thoughts. We can see her misjudgement of others and wish for her to act more on the accepting feelings she also has.

This book was better than Sense and Sensibility to me. I enjoyed reading about respectable men for a change. It seemed the women were more deplorable than the men in Emma. Quite a change, it seems.

View all my reviews >>

Speaking of goodreads... I think you all should join :) And share your books and reviews with me. I like seeing what other people read and what they think of it.

I always feel guilty being on the computer and not editing, so I should probably either go clean the kitchen or edit some pictures.

pictures from the last 2 months

Things have been really busy the last few months. I've had 2-3 photoshoots every week; which is A LOT. I'm having to learn how to pace myself, so that I can give each shoot the time and energy they deserve. Here are some shots from a few of the shoots I had in the last few months.

Some friends had a baby, and got some pregnancy pictures done 2 days before she was born :)

I took some pictures of the Salt Lake temple, and Temple Square for Mother's Day.

I took a family's pictures at Wheeler Farm. I really enjoyed this one :)

Met a girl from my mom's work, who was super pretty and REALLY good at modeling :)

I was able to take some promo pictures for my brother. He plays guitar and is being endorsed by Guitar Pro 6.

My friends graduated and I got to take their graduation/family photos. I LOOVED making their announcement. And their dog was way cute :)

I got a job!

I got a job! I start in 3 weeks. At Intermountain Financial Group/MassMutual. I'll give you more details on what I'll be doing there when I start. For now, I'll be helping to close up at my old job. And taking more pictures on the weekends. I'm so super duper excited for Spring and all the sunshine to give me more time for pictures and more green.

Some other stuff I'm thinking about:

• I only have 100 pages left of the last book that is out of the Wheel of Time :( Who would have thought (besides Trevor), that year and a half ago when I started this series, I would love it so much by the end? The 12th book comes out in the fall of this year, and then the last one comes out a year later! I should have waited to start the series in 2011 so I wouldn't have any waiting to do. It's all Trevor's fault.
• Along that line, I have NO idea what I'm going to read next! I need to hurry and decide because the last 100 pages could only last me 1 more day, eep!
• Trevor asked me to start a World of Warcraft character and play with him... ugh, why do I do so many geeky things?
• We also got fish. And a cool tank. It looks like this:
• And that's it.

Hymenoptera Giganticus

While I'm waiting to edit a bunch of the pictures from our mini-trip to Cedar City last week (and while I'm letting my insides calm down about having to purchase new tires while we were there), I wanted to share the graduation announcement picture I did for my friends. It was a lot of fun :)

And good news! I'm an aunt again! I'm a big fan of people making babies for me to hold.

Job search continues. Have another interview this afternoon that I think is going to be really positive, but I don't want to jinx it.

On a side note: I am exhausted today! At 3:30 AM last night I woke up to some people shouting and I was so tired and disoriented, I couldn't even tell if they were speaking English, or where they were. Finally after 5 minutes of feeling confused, I realized they were outside in the parking lot yelling at each other, and since our window was open, it felt like they were inside. Grr! So mad! Like I don't lose enough sleep as it is. I still couldn't think straight enough to figure out if they were speaking English. I'm just remembering a bunch of gobbledeegook and feeling super irritated. Who has a yelling fight at 3AM in the parking lot?

Seeing as most of my paragraphs have been pretty much side notes: The bees are back :( The window by my desk must have a hole leading to the outside world or something because every spring we get bees inside! I HATE BEES! They are some of the MOST disgusting (and honestly, terrifying) creatures I encounter. Bleh. So I either have to crush them (and risk getting stung because I'm me and will probably just make them mad), or leave them be (and risk getting stung if they decide to find their way through the blinds). The other option is to capture them and set them free, but I discovered last year I don't have the guts for that. It takes me 10 minutes to do my breathing exercises to get up the nerve to put the cup over them, and then 10 more minutes to slide the paper underneath and feel brave enough to release them outside. (Most of the time I hurry and set the cup down outside and run back inside. Then 20 minutes later, go out and get the cup. But doing things the bee-ane (you know, like humane) way forces my hands to be way to close to their fuzzy buzzing bodies, wiggling antennas, and not to mention their giganticus stingers. This week, I've opted for leaving them alone so far. I'm not sure how long that's going to last though; every few minutes I hear a sudden burst of buzzing as the current bee tries to escape through our obviously too clean window, and I just KNOW, as my heart skips a beat and my eyes shoot up to the window, that he's going to figure things out and fly the other way one of these times. And when that happens, it's only a half a second to my typing hands or exposed blinking eyeballs. If I could talk to bees, I think I would be a happy camper. I would ask them to leave me alone, and to spread the word to the other hives because, really, I don't want to hurt them, I'm just terrified they're going to think the flowers on my shirt are real and get mad when they find out they aren't. If I could talk to bees, I would also give the bee in my window directions back to outside. I'd help him locate the hole he came in, and we could have peace between our two species. I could even consider giving up honey.

Break time is over :(

Looking for a job and more pictures

The last 2 1/2 weeks have been very weird for me. I have to go to work every day, but that job is ending. It's really weird. I'm interviewing places, feeling out of my element, feeling tired. I love the weekends because I can try to forget that I need to find a new job. And by Sunday I seem to be able to, but then by 9pm on Sunday, it usually resurfaces.

All 4 of the places I interviewed in the last 2 weeks said no. How depressing is that? One I totally botched the second interview, one sent me a letter in the mail saying they hired someone else, another one said he needed to give his current assistant another chance, and another said I was too expensive. All of them said that they have been surprised how many people have been applying--that they've had more applicants than they can remember having ever. I've probably sent out close to 100 resumes and only heard back from 5 people. So discouraging.

I did interview with a university this morning though, and it looks positive. At least, to me, it does. They said it looks like I'd be a good fit, but that they have more people to interview too. And what's the deal with employers wanting the weekend to "think about it"? Don't they realize it's making me having horrible weekends full of stress??

Next week was supposed to be our vacation week. The one week every six months that Trevor and I get to be together all the time. The one time we get to have weekends off together. And I have to keep working for half of it :( Trevor is still taking the whole week off, effectively getting 10 consecutive days off. He definitely deserves a break--he's been working like crazy! But I have to work for 3 days in the middle of it. I'm lucky. I'm still taking 2 days off, and my boss isn't killing me. But it still sucks bigtime that this whole job mess fell right on our vacation. We decided we're going to go to Cedar and visit my brother and his family! We are super excited!

I did get to take some more pictures last weekend though :) And Conference was helpful because I got to listen AND edit. I took the pictures Friday, and got the editing done by Sunday! Fastest shoot EVER! Here's some of the pictures:

These were her senior pictures. It really made me love WORD OF MOUTH :) The got my name from someone who I'd already done pictures for. So everyone out there: don't be stingy with the referrals! :)

Kids Pictures

I wanted to share the pictures from my last shoot a couple weeks ago. These were the first kids I've done besides my niece and nephew. Doing a session with a really young kid (he is 1) was a very new experience. He was cute and interested, but 1 year olds just don't do much. It was also good for me to do two at once. It's interesting trying to find balance during the session.

To see all the pictures, go to my website here. (Oh yeah! I made a website last week :) It's cool! You should go see. www.photosbybecky.webs.com)

Here's a few of my favorites:

Bleh

Oh man :( This week has sucked. Lots of you know already, but my boss is retiring in 7 short weeks and I have to get a new job. I haven't been sleeping, I've been eating too much, and I've only had one person call me for an interview. Plus, on top of it all, the weather has been messing with my photos again :(

Two months is a pretty decent amount of notice to give someone who needs to get a new job. And I can also use time at work to search and interview. I'm just feeling really stressed out. It's already been a whole work-week! I've been working here for just short of 4 years. It's sort of scary to think about being somewhere else. My life could be drastically different in 2 months than it is right now.

Trevor and I have been doing so well paying down our cars and our credit cards and saving the last year, I don't want my job to be the thing that messes everything up. So I'm looking for jobs that will pay me the same amount I'm making now. I'm sure this happens to everyone who looks for new jobs, but my confidence in my experience and abilities is rollercoastering. Sometimes I feel so confident, I have no doubt I'll be able to find something excellent in the next 2 weeks. And sometimes I feel like there's no way I'll be able to find something in 2 months and that I'll have to take a low paying job just so we don't die.

Today I just feel like I need to relax. I want to be able to use the weekend to relax as much as I can, but it's not like I can only look for jobs during work hours. We'll see. I for sure need to sleep. A lot.

On a brighter note: I'm getting some pictures taken of ME this weekend. Crazy, I know. Travis, Trevor's brother, also does photography, and he has agreed to take some pictures of me so I can use them on my website and stuff. Hopefully I won't have bags under my eyes, and hopefully my body won't show the possible 5 pounds I've gained this week :) I sort of know how my clients feel now though: I have NO idea what to wear. It seems like such a huge choice! This will be good practice for me though. It's good to be in front of the camera sometimes so that I can remember how people are feeling about how much direction they need.

Dude Shoot

It's a relief to have these done! I took some pictures of my friend downtown at the library a week or so ago. I haven't really been able to get that much practice taking pictures of men by themselves. It's different when they're with a woman. A man automatically looks more manly standing next to a girl. He's the rock. He's the thing that compliments the woman's beauty. He makes it okay for her to be as pretty as she can be. And when you're taking pictures of a couple, there's sort of a story going on. As the photographer, you're sort of telling the story of their love, or something like that. But when you're taking pictures of an individual--at least, when I take pictures of an individual--there's something else to it. You have to come up with the story all on your own. And I've done that with girls... but a guy? Ugh. It was hard. Let's be honest. I was nervous, and excited, and and worried that none of the pictures would turn out. And let's be even more honest--a lot of them didn't. But I think enough turned out :) And no one has to see the bad ones, right? That's what counts, haha.

Link to the album in case you can't view the slide show:

Elijah Finals

In the last two weeks, I've discovered some cool features on Photoshop that have really helped at depth to my pictures. I started adjusting the exposure and color levels on the person and the background together, and then on the background separately. I've always messed with the background on its own, but never the levels, and I've been very happy with my discovery :) I'm sure lots of people already know about that and LOTS more things that I DON'T know about. But I like that I found it. It has let me find the right skin color, and really make the person pop--and then make the background the colors that I want it to be. Most of the time.

Editing for me is interesting and engrossing. I always get caught up and spend way too much time. It sort of makes it so I actually don't want to get started a lot of times because I know I'll lose track of time. Two of my sessions I had scheduled for last weekend had to be rescheduled because of the rain and snow--which sucked, but is also probably good so I have more time to do normal things. I haven't been spending as much time with my family, and doing normal things around the house as I would want to. So this week it's probably a good thing I only have 1 session I'm editing. And I'm taking a break next weekend so I have lots of time to get ready for my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's baby shower.